Australians all let us find voice
For we are being deceived
Our country’s politicians foist
Their scorn on refugees
Send Tamils to Sri Lankan camps
Like Jews of history
On UN stage, the world will rage
But blame not Aussies please
Our politicians act for selves
Ignoring of our pleas
I need the watching world to know
THEY DO NOT ACT FOR ME

Yesterday a good friend and colleague of mine remarked,

I don’t understand people who valorize the Enlightenment, as if Cartesian rationality is the be all, end all of philosophy.

He then went on to wonder whether Jonathan Israel’s books are worth reading. The answer to the second question is an emphatic “yes!” I would especially recommend his book Radical Enlightenment. As for the first remark, Enlightenment, for me, does not mean Cartesian rationality, nor even necessarily a particular period in history, but something like a virtual tendency within human social collectives that exists, to use Badiou’s language in Logics of Worlds, with greater or lesser intensity or brightness at all times and places.

What, then, is the nature of this tendency and intensity? For me– and others will differ –Enlightenment is a synonym for immanence. This immanence unfolds along three axis and can develop unevenly, referring to…

I’m in the middle of writing a long essay on Schelling and the resurgence of interest in his work of late, at least in the Anglophone world. I’ll be posting the essay in installments as I finish each section. For now, here is Jerry Day, from his book on Schelling’s influence on Eric Voegelin, describing Schelling’s philosophy of mythology, including also how it was interpreted by Coleridge.  Incidentally, I’ve just confirmed a speaking engagement at the PCC Forum with Paul Caringella, a Voegelin scholar, in October. I’m hoping to record and post it here.

At one point in Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology, the work that Voegelin claims brought the “crash” to his History, one finds the following claim: “[I]t is not we who have placed mythology, but mythology has placed us in the perspective from which, at present, we shall consider it. The content of this conference is henceforth no longer mythology explained by…

Upon logging into your SkyDrive account you will see all of your files in the tiles view by default.

Click the Create button on the top of the documents pannel.

The choices you get from click the Create button are

• Word Document
• Excel workbook
• PowerPoint presentation
• OneNote notebook
• Excel survey

Click the Word document and type a name for the file.

Then the Word App will open. Type and edit the document using the free Word Web App.

When you want to invite others to edit or view the document you click the File–>Share command. Then click “Share with People”.

Then type the email(s) you want to share with. These people do not need a Microsoft SkyDrive account. Verify that the check box “Recipients can edit” is checked if you want them to edit.

When you click “Share” an email will be sent with a hyperlink for access that your…

I went along to see London Mayor Boris Johnson open the 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival last night. The man declared himself impressed with the venue, our city’s quaint mid-nineteenth century neoclassical Town Hall, deeming it more appropriate than his own sterile and modern energy-saver abutting the old Pool of London.

In case any of you are wondering why a politician travelled 16891 kilometers to open such an event, Boris Johnson is a writer with a dozen or so successful books under his belt. He came up through the newspaper ranks